"It's very much a release," former Army medic Eli Wright said in an interview aired on PBS Newshour, which profiled the work done by Combat Paper NJ. "You know, the first time I started doing it, I felt like I was just letting off the pressure. You know, I felt like there had been all this pressure building up and I had nowhere to turn and no outlet. And it felt -- the first time I started cutting the uniform, I was literally, you know, separating away, tearing away at the fibers of war."

The Combat Paper Project is based in San Francisco, CA with affiliate paper mills in New Jersey, New York and Nevada. The project has traveled to Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Kosovo providing workshops, exhibitions, performances and artists' talks.

Veterans use their uniforms worn in service to create works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into sheets of paper. The work generates a much-needed conversation between veterans and civilians regarding our collective responsibilities and shared understanding in war.

NJPA 56th ANNUAL DINNER

Jeremy Scahill

“Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield”

Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter and National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine. His first book, Blackwater, published by Nation Books in 2007, looks at how this mercenary company became the nation’s pre-eminent military contractor. His second book, Dirty Wars, to be released on April 23, 2013, takes us inside America’s new covert wars and follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield.” Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time, as he reports from the frontlines of Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond in this high-stakes investigation.